Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : A One-Man Campaign for More Women’s Restrooms

Fighting for social change can be such lonely work.

Just ask Bob Glaser, a San Diego political consultant. He had an epiphany about social inequity while standing at a urinal at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium during a break in a sold-out concert by Billy Joel and Elton John.

A young woman barged her way into the restroom and assumed a position directly beside Glaser. She explained that the line to use the women’s room was too long.

Within days, Glaser filed a $5.4-million claim with City Hall for “embarrassment and emotional trauma.” He demanded more restrooms for women.

The stadium has 39 women’s restrooms to 35 for men, but Glaser insists that is misleading because men’s rooms have greater capacity.

As part of an 11,000-seat expansion, the city is adding two more women’s rooms, but Glaser concludes that there still won’t be enough. He has discovered a government study that suggests a 60-40 split favoring women.

For his efforts, he has been ridiculed by editorial writers, cartoonists and a local columnist who called him “the apostle of weenie-ismo” for championing what they think is a frivolous cause.

True, he did get a guest shot on the “Donohue” show, but his major political client dumped him and other would-be clients won’t return his calls. The City Council kept him waiting for two days this week and still won’t talk to him.

Still, he presses on.

“I’ve been lampooned left and right for this,” Glaser said. “But I have a daughter, and I don’t want her someday to have to wait 40 minutes to use a restroom during a concert.”

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Teeth for Tojo: Before the 50th anniversary of V-J Day fades, the story should be told of Gen. Hideki Tojo’s dentures.

Our story starts with the war over, the wartime prime minister imprisoned awaiting trial as a war criminal, and a puckish draftee named E.J. (Jack) Mallory from Chico.

Mallory, assigned to the dental corps, had a hand in making a full set of dentures for Tojo. He decided to inscribe the dentures with the dots and dashes that, in Morse code, spelled out “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Mallory and his buddies enjoyed a good laugh for several months before the story leaked out to an American radio station. Suddenly, all the goodwill efforts of the Occupation Army seemed imperiled.

Mallory and a co-conspirator rushed to Sugama Prison in the middle of a snowy night, rousted Tojo and asked to “borrow” his choppers. The dentures were re-ground to erase the dots and dashes.

This allowed Mallory the next morning to tell an angry colonel that, honest sir, those stories about Tojo’s dentures were not true.

Mallory, now 71, finished his service without further excitement and practiced dentistry until his retirement a few years ago. Tojo was hanged in 1948 and there is no indication that he ever knew his dentures were the object of skulduggery.

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Rx for a Better Job?

In periods of economic decline, college graduates flock to medical school, says the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. The tendency to seek job security as doctors is particularly acute in recession-bound California, where applications to the state’s eight medical schools rose nearly 63% from 1990 to 1994. Here are the states with the most applicants last year and the percentage of increase since 1990. *--*

APPLICANTS APPLICANTS % INCREASE STATE IN 1990 IN 1994 1990-1994 1.California 3,644 5,924 +62.5 2.New York 2,900 3,766 +29.8 3.Texas 2,063 2,862 +38.7 4.Illinois 1,417 2,390 +68.6 5.Ohio 1,295 1,942 +49.9

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Source: Assn. of American Medical Colleges

Researched by TRACY THOMAS/Los Angeles Times

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Golf and the new world order: A pair of San Rafael entrepreneurs is manufacturing golf clubs made of melted-down nuclear missiles from the melted-down Soviet Union. The Peace Missile driver can be yours for $325, the Peace Putter for $109.

Cary Schuman and John Lisanti got the idea while helping design the Moscow Country Club and Golf Course.

Members of the armed forces seem particularly drawn to the symbolism. “Imagine taking missiles once meant to destroy us and converting them to a peacetime use,” Lisanti enthuses. “Who’d have thought it?”

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Your legal system at work: With criminal defendants facing life sentences under the state’s “three strikes” law, excuses are becoming more inventive.

Like the credit card thief who explained in San Diego Superior Court that he only used the purloined card to buy “necessities.” That defense sagged a bit when the prosecutor showed that he had charged some stylish clothes at Nordstrom, tinted contact lenses, a set of golf clubs and a life-size blowup doll of a French maid.

The defense attorney launched into a quibble about one man’s frivolity being another’s necessity. The prosecutor threatened to sing “The Bare Necessities” from Disney’s “The Jungle Book.”

The judge hushed them both up. And the 11-woman, one-man jury was swift: guilty on all charges.

EXIT LINE

“Death Threats Force Elvis to Cancel Comeback Concert.”

--Headline in Weekly World News on (exclusive) story that the King will not be appearing at the Hollywood Bowl, as previously reported (exclusively) in the WWN.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.